"I became a fan the day he died," says Mabe, better known to many as "Joni Mabe the Elvis Babe." "Something about his voice - I became obsessed."

Obsessed definitely is the correct word. Mabe later did her University of Georgia thesis work in drawing and painting and printmaking on Elvis, and things only got more intense from there.

She went "on the road" with her Elvis art, collecting memorabilia along the way - a vagabond life that lasted 14 years. When Mabe finally settled down, she needed somewhere to put her collection, so she bought her great-grandparents' old boarding house in Cornelia, spent seven years restoring the building to its former glory and set up the Everything Elvis Museum on the top floor.

Mabe calls her collection "the most unique and one of the largest collections in the world." In addition to countless posters, paintings and home decor featuring the King, Mabe is in possession of a test tube containing Elvis' wart.

Apparently the pickled growth, which she bought from the doctor who removed it, is a highly sought item that many people have offered to buy. Once, a "lawyer called wanting to get DNA samples off the wart ... to clone Elvis," Mabe says. "For a while they wouldn't leave me alone." She rebuffed the requests by informing the cloning enthusiasts that "the wart is a virus, (so) I said you would get a viral Elvis clone. It wouldn't come out nice!" While this sounds like an idea for a deliciously terrible B-movie, Mabe is serious about the wart. "I'm against cloning Elvis," she says, without a trace of irony. "There can't be another one."

No doubt. But at Mabe's annual Big E Festival, people sure do try.

Not content to just wait for people to come see her collection, she started the festival in 1999: a weekend of music, Elvis' favorite food (peanut butter and banana sandwiches, Moon Pies, barbecue, boiled peanuts), trivia and the big draw: Elvis Tribute Artist competitions.

The ETAs, as they are known (Elvis impersonator is sort of derogatory, so don't say that), compete in divisions - youth and adult, and champions are chosen by a panel of judges. While nearly 1,000 guests watch from chairs on the front lawn of the Loudermilk Boarding House, competitors each perform three songs - more if they're chosen as finalists. It's a full day of music in the August heat that doesn't stop for anything.

One year, Mabe says three women were watching from the porch swing while an ETA was performing "Burning Love." The swing came loose from the ceiling of the 100-year-old porch and the women crashed to the ground amid a shower of rotten wood and dust, which covered the sweaty onlookers like black soot. On stage, the ETA "didn't even stop singing," Mabe says.

Mabe recognizes the humor in all this, but also her own role in the mania. "I see it as a religion," she says. "I'm in it, but I'm also a spectator."

The festival draws so many spectators Mabe thinks this will be the last year she holds it at her museum and will search for a new site for future events. That means the fun can continue, but Mabe's boarding house will no longer be filled with evidence of the Elvis incarnates who come to compete at the festival: discarded sideburns; the lingering smell of Brut, Elvis' favorite cologne.